Atlanta OAUG

Tips and Techniques

www.atloaug.org

The fall conference of OAUG will be in October in Honolulu. We understand some of you may be having a little trouble justifying a trip to paradise with your management. Since over 800 papers were submitted for just 120 slots, we know many members tried to get a partial free ride. Here are some additional techniques you might use with those around you about your attendance at the Hawaii conference.

Your Boss – I will stay over a Saturday night on my own time so my plane ticket will be $350 less than the one we bought to go to the San Diego Conference [True story – ed.]. The hotel will cost exactly the same nightly rate as in San Diego. The trip should cost about the same as other conferences. The papers and presentations should be awesome because they picked only the top 15% from all papers submitted. You should go too.

Your Spouse – Of course you can go honey. We will use the frequent flyer miles and the company will pay for the hotel room. Your part of the trip will be almost free.

Your Consultant – While I am gone, please complete the following tasks.

Your Client – Since you can’t go, I will pick up an extra set of handouts for you. I can’t afford to miss new R11 material.

Your Travel Agent – Sorry, I am booking my trip through OAUG to get the best hotel accommodations and airline discounts.

Your CAI Vendor(s) – What day is your golf outing?

Your Neighbors – I work for a really great company and they told me they appreciate my hard work. They are sending me to Hawaii for a big conference. Would you watch the house while I am gone?

Your Co-Workers – I told the boss we all should go, and I really don’t know why he picked me. Maybe it was all those tips I got out of the Atlanta Newsletter.

Your Headhunter(s) – My company really appreciates me, and I wouldn’t dream of leaving them this year.

From: "Rao, Narendra" <narendra.rao@us.landisstaefa.com>

The Oracle Financials Open Interface Manual has recommendations for some additional indexes to be put on Transactional Flexfields.

From Michael Barone at Carolina Software

Oracle Applications Patch Utility (adpatch) will "hang" for NO APPARENT reason. After any patch is installed the adpatch-utility will pause and will NOT continue (just after the FND_INSTALL_PROCESSES installation table is deleted).

Oracle Solution: Add the following statement to your Oracle Server's sqlnet.ora file:

BEQUEATH_DETACH=YES

Then bounce (stop and start) your Oracle Server's Listener.

From: cgilstra@us.oracle.com

In GUI you can easily use existing menu structures in the Define Responsibility form and 'Exclude' the items in the menu structure you do not want. Excluding does not change the existing menu structure, it just eliminates that particular item from the responsibility. You can either use the top menu structure that includes everything and eliminate items or find a structure that is close to the responsibility you are defining and eliminate fewer items. To be consistent, I use the top menu structure and eliminate from there. In GUI you can also build your menus from the ground up, but there is really no need to, and it is very time consuming! To maintain the responsibilities, there are menu and responsibility reports you can review in System Admin. You may also want to maintain some sort of matrix to keep up with who accesses what.

Oracle provided the following answer in the Applications Q&A:

Q. When and how will Oracle provide a supported migration path from multiple product installs (such as multiple sets of books) to the single install multiple organization architecture? When will customers be required to migrate to the multiple organization architecture?

A. Oracle plans to provide utilities to help customers with multiple installs merge data into a single installation. These utilities are currently under development, and they will be available sometime after Release 11 is shipped. Customers with multiple installs will need to merge their data into one multi-org install before migrating to Release 12.

From: "Ernie Logan Jr." <Logan_Ernie/houston_is@crow.bmc.com>

It takes on the order of 64MB of RAM to run 10SC forms with reasonable response. Windows 95 needs 32 - 48MB just to run itself with no apps reasonably, and Windows NT needs minimum of 64MB. Anything less, and your spending your time swapping the 18 - 20MB of runtime DLL's while trying to load the 1 - 2MB fmx. (Example sizes from PO). Your mileage may vary, but this is where my performance problems on forms load lay. We have standardized on 64MB RAM for all GUI workstations.

In R10.7 you can drill down from the Account Inquiry form to the AP and AR sub ledgers (but not INV, PO, CST, or FA). Use reports to track activities in those sub ledgers.

From: Steve Bradley at BOSS Corporation

You can shut off batch control for AP Invoice Entry and at a later date invoke batch control if your procedures change. But, be aware all invoices keyed without batch control cannot be queried in the Invoice Entry form if batch control is turned on at a later date because they don’t have a batch number.

How have other companies approached the problem of a short fiscal year in Fixed Assets 10.7?

From: "Agrawal, Rajat (MN10)" <Rajat.Agrawal@HBC.honeywell.com>

I made the GL calendar to have 12 monthly periods. However, we depreciate assets only every 6 months. So I defined the FA calendar to have two 6-monthly periods per fiscal year. Note that you must name the periods in FA calendar the same as the name you have given in GL calendar (for example two periods Jun-97 and Dec-97 in FA calendar)

From: Oracle AR Support

Here is a check list to resolve APP-43448 errors. This type of error means AutoInvoice was unable to locate a valid sales tax rate for the transaction.

1. Make sure your Sales tax location flexfield is properly defined and compiles successfully. Go to Define System Options screen (not in flexfield screen). To be sure, re-QuickPick the Sales Tax Location Flexfield and commit. Make sure the 5 concurrent processes complete successfully.

2. Does the transaction type associated with the invoice/credit memo in error have Tax Calculate set to Yes?

3. If domestic, do you have a tax code of 'Location' defined in the Define Tax Codes and Rates? Check the Effective Date. Is it before the transaction date of the transaction in question?

4. Is there a location combination defined in the review sales tax rate for the location structure used (i.e. State.County.City).

5. Does the transaction date from the transaction in question fall within the start date of the location combination defined in #4?

6. Does the location combination (defined in #4) correspond to the ship to address on transaction?

7. Are the link to line attributes populated and pointing correctly to the corresponding line type attributes?

8. Check the tax code belonging to the customer who is being invoiced at the header level. Is it set to the appropriate tax code? A location based tax code will default to blank (or be grayed out).

9. Check the tax code belonging to the customer who is being invoiced at the site level. Is it set to the appropriate tax code? The code at the site level will take precedence.

10. Check for any other customer exemptions/exceptions.

From: Jim Crum at BOSS Corporation

It is possible to delete an AR sub ledger journal entry while it is still in the GL interface table or after import into GL. If this happens to you, don’t panic. Call Oracle support and ask them about a procedure called ARGCGP. If you run it correctly, you can reverse the posting status in the AR sub ledger, and you can start over again.

From: Stan Wolfe <stanw@magmacom.com>

AutoLockbox assumes that the control file is in $AR_TOP/bin. You have no way to get around it. You can call the .ctl anything you want. As far as losing it in an upgrade goes, document it, store a copy in your custom directory and remember to copy it into the new $AR_TOP/bin after you next major upgrade.

From: alok.chadda@ae.ge.com

In unix follow the following...

Create a symbolic link from $AR_TOP/control file to $CUSTOM_TOP/custom control file and whenever you upgrade once again create a symbolic link.

The commercial invoice id number on the commercial invoice report is the same number as the picking slip. The commercial invoice is not stored independently in its own database tables.

Q. I noticed that among the [PO] implementation steps are procedures to configure the Job and the Position Flexfields. These obviously are HR Flexfields. What limitations will I encounter if I decide NOT to configure these Flexfields? We are not going to use Oracle HR.

From: "Frost, Scott" <sfrost@noblestar.com>

Within PO you can establish the hierarchy of approval levels for certain purchase requisitions from information contained in HR. In order to create this hierarchy, you will need employees obviously, but also their POSITIONS. Usually this hierarchy is created around an employee's position, and not JOB. Some implementations of HR have only setup jobs, and then when attempts are made to integrate with PO, it does not work, because it uses the POSITION. The employee position will determine approval levels, and dollar amounts that can be approved up to for specific positions.

From: FERREMX@mapcoinc.com

If you don't set up these Flexfields, you won't be able to define hierarchies, which are assigned to employees to identify where do they stand in the approval process. And if an employee is not attached to a position in the purchasing hierarchy, he won't be able to even access the requisition/PO forms.

From: Greg.Wunderlich@kellogg.com (Greg Wunderlich)

You can define PA periods at any interval you wish. If you reconcile to the GL, it would be cleanest if your semi-monthly periods fell with in one GL period and did not overlap. Hope this helps. (See p. 11-57 of OP Users Guide v4.1)

From a Citrix bulletin board

Oracle Financials Performance Increased by Modifying ORACLE.INI File

Synopsis: Oracle Financials Smartclient defaults to using 100% of a single processor while waiting for a query to return from the database server. A simple modification to the ORACLE.INI file causes Smartclient to intermittently release the processor in a multitasking environment.

Details: Oracle Financials Smartclient is a 16-bit application. Smartclient, after submitting a database query, goes into a polling loop against the Oracle SQL*Net driver. By default, this loop does not allow interruptions and, therefore, utilizes 100% of a single processor.

To override the default behavior and allow interruptions in this wait loop:

1. Edit the ORACLE.INI file.

2. Locate the "[net23]" section header or append it if it does not exist.

3. Add the following line to the section:

To verify the performance anomaly: Before adding the "yield" line, use Performance Monitor to audit %CPU for a single Oracle Financials user. Note that the %CPU graph goes to a sustained state (100% on a single, 50% on a dual, 25% on a quad) after the user presses the ENTER key to submit a query and that %CPU drops back to a nominal level when the query data returns to the user's session.

After adding the "yield" line, the user's %CPU graph will look like a square wave during the query wait time. There will no longer be a sustained plateau to the graph.

Example: One customer maxed out at 12 WinFrame users on a quad 200 Pentium server. After modifying the ORACLE.INI file, the customer was able to get 40 concurrent users on the same server.

The head guy at Oracle Support is.....

Randy Baker (RBaker@us.oracle.com) Phone: 650-506-4577 20 Davis Dr., Belmont, CA 94002 office #3074 Senior VP, Customer Support Services Fax: 650-633-2524. Exec. Asst. Gail Castle (GCastle@us.oracle.com) Phone: 650-506-5542.

We need your contributions to keep the content of this news letter fresh and topical. Please, send me an e-mail to jcrum@sprynet.com or FAX to BOSS Corporation at 770-622-5400. Thanks!

Since this news letter is a cooperative and joint effort, no one has tried to own (or be responsible for) the material contained in these newsletters. Therefore, the reader is granted a right to copy and distribute these materials for educational use. We ask only that you attribute the Atlanta OAUG as the source. Use these materials at your own risk, and ATLOAUG or the authors make no representation about the suitability of this material at your site.

See www.atloaug.org for presentation

AP/PO/FA - Steve Bradley, BOSS Corporation

GL/AR - Michelle Lane, A2i Assoc.

Self Service Web/Workflow - Brenda Carlton, KPMG

See www.atloaug.org for presentations

Karen discussed highlights of the San Diego conference and the first European conference held in France. The next European conference will be April 1999 in Spain. The next conference held in the Americas is Oct 25-29 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Registration must be prepaid in order to reserve a hotel room and receive the OAUG discount. The conference has been extended to four days. A keynote address will be held each morning by Oracle executives. The Geo/SIG meetings will also be held during the conference. Competition was fierce for paper selections. Eight hundred papers were submitted. The top 120 will be selected.

Karen also discussed results achieved regarding pricing, future releases, etc. at the past meeting the OAUG board held with Oracle executives.

• Aug 21 BellSouth
• Sept 18 Oracle Corp
• Nov 20 KPMG

1) To volunteer to speak at a future meeting, send an e-mail to bcarlton@sprynet.com. Include a short paragraph on the topic and a description of your expertise.

2) To host a meeting - See www.atloaug.org for responsibilities. Available - eight meetings in 1999.

3) To contribute newsletter articles - submit by e-mail to jcrum@sprynet.com

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Thanks! Special thanks to Kirby Kraft and Karen Gilbert of CSA Consulting who provided us with a wonderful conference space and refreshments.

Sixty-five attendees were present.